Senate confirmation

If confirmed, Tom Price will be the best qualified HHS secretary in a generation. His nomination has been received enthusiastically by the health care industry. Moreover, unlike Kathleen Sebelius and Sylvia Burwell, he spent twenty years actually treating patients. He knows the system and why Obamacare isn’t working. If the Democrats successfully Bork him, it means that they can’t be trusted with even a modicum of power.

In 2013, Sen. Reid and other Democrats pushed forward with a rule change dubbed the “nuclear option” to eliminate filibusters for all presidential nominations except Supreme Court justices. This means that a simple majority of 51 votes instead of 60 votes is necessary to confirm executive office appointments.

Dire warnings that GOP unity over the court blockade would splinter after Trump’s ascension have yet to materialize. And a pressure campaign on vulnerable Republican senators — backed by polling data and liberal groups disrupting campaign events back home — hasn’t budged anyone.

The reason why confirmations have become so contentious is that the federal government has grown so big, and has seized so much power, that every federal official or member of the judiciary can wield outsized control over the lives of the citizenry — far more than was ever intended by the nation's Founders.